Jury Duty

I am currently slurping free wifi and espressos in the juror lounge.

It's misdemeanor court so the max time I could serve is 3 days.

Not to shabby!

Atta boy, Rob. I served on a grand jury once when we were in VA. Now, that was fun.

Round these parts, the words "jury duty" means your shopping for n-gagement ring.

Free Wifi and Espresso for jurors???? Good to see your tax dollars at work

I always get picked to serve, but never get impaneled. Hmmmmmm

flyangler18 said:

Atta boy, Rob. I served on a grand jury once when we were in VA. Now, that was fun.

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The case wasn't very interesting when i served but one of the other jurors was a cop that worked the night shift in one of the worst neighborhoods of Cleveland. He looked like a linebacker and had some great stories to tell.

Craig

What kinda yuppified hoi polly courts do they have in AZ? The court houses I have to go to (in Detroit especially) for Jury duty, if you don't get cavity searched on your way in it's a good day.

They're showing Pirates of the Carribean on 3 42" Flatscreens.

I find that to be a little annoying.

olllllo said:

They're showing Pirates of the Carribean on 3 42" Flatscreens.

I find that to be a little annoying.

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Ah...you poor thing.

I also ate a free banana and granola bar.

The Red Bulls in the vending machine are $2.

I thought jury duty was really cool. I would gladly do it again. I think it is strange how many people hate it. That is some straight up old school civic duty right there!

I will probably NEVER get selected for a jury because in Delaware they sent you a little questionaire and one of the questions is do you work in the insurance industry and if you mark yes you will almost never get selected.

olllllo said:

They're showing Pirates of the Carribean on 3 42" Flatscreens.

I find that to be a little annoying.

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If you come back tomorrow you should bring Beer Fest and Strange Brew DVDs

Can you imagine the look on the old ladies faces....

I’ve been selected to 2 juries. The first was a capital murder trail. The defendant was caught with his credit cards. She sat on the stand and admitted shooting the victim ... twice. Trial lasted several weeks and we were sequestered at the end. We finally get to the deliberation room and the first thing one of the jurors says “I don’t think she shot that man”. After a week of trying to convince her, we ended up hung. One person is all it takes. She did not want to convict the defendant. I was young and naive, so I struggled with that for a long time. I still remember walking back into the court and seeing the victims family knowing we couldn’t convict.

Similar situation this year. One person out for revenge, accidentally shoots and paralyzes the intended victim’s friend. One juror: “I don’t believe he shot him with malice in his heart”, so he wouldn’t convict. Now I’m older and more cynical, it didn’t bother me quite as much.

I did learn that I need to work on my anti-juror-selection technique.

Mike M said:

I’ve been selected to 2 juries. The first was a capital murder trail. The defendant was caught with his credit cards. She sat on the stand and admitted shooting the victim ... twice. Trial lasted several weeks and we were sequestered at the end. We finally get to the deliberation room and the first thing one of the jurors says “I don’t think she shot that man”. After a week of trying to convince her, we ended up hung. One person is all it takes. She did not want to convict the defendant. I was young and naive, so I struggled with that for a long time. I still remember walking back into the court and seeing the victims family knowing we couldn’t convict.

Similar situation this year. One person out for revenge, accidentally shoots and paralyzes the intended victim’s friend. One juror: “I don’t believe he shot him with malice in his heart”, so he wouldn’t convict. Now I’m older and more cynical, it didn’t bother me quite as much.

I did learn that I need to work on my anti-juror-selection technique.

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After spending a day during the jury selection process, I was amazed at how many really stupid people are out there. Just by the questions they ask, it's very obvious the the attorneys how ignorant and or stupid their "peers" are. It's scary.

The juror on the first trial was a chemist. In my opinion her actions were due to sympathy for the defendant, not stupidity. It was capital murder and she was saving a sista.

Interesting some of the things I heard during that trial. The defendant’s sister was a prostitute she was the victims particular favorite – until she got AIDS. She regaled us with stories of how she ripped off her Johns while she was giving BJs. What a sweetie.

I've been dismissed.... however I discovered a huge nail in my Jeep tire.

I'm getting that fixed now.

My first and only jury duty resulted in me getting selected and having to sit through a case involving two counts of assault w/ a deadly weapon and two counts of armed robbery... According to the law, the defendant was found guilty and ended up getting a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years... We asked the judge if the defendant had a chance to plea for a lesser charge, which they did and chose not too... Ended up sending someone to prison for ten years for a STUPID incident...

I went home, grabbed a pack of cigarettes (I don't smoke, just under EXTREME cases) and got stoopid druk that night... Even though it was completely correct, I still feel it in the pit of my stomach on occasion...

I have never been selected for jury duty. Not even summoned. Strange that a man 40 years old would never have been summoned. My wife has been summoned half a dozen times and she has worked in the court system for 20 years.
Go figure.

Well Rob,
Thanks anyways for performing your duty as a citizen. Ya, it might be a PITA and it never comes at a convienient time but it's one of the few costs to being a citizen of this country and it's not much of a cost at that.

So thanks agian.
PTN

Too bad about the tire.

Revvy said:

The court houses I have to go to (in Detroit especially) for Jury duty, if you don't get cavity searched on your way in it's a good day.

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Psst! That wasn't jury duty...you were an inmate...

My jury duty experiences have been uniformly bad. Rotten commutes, parking that costs 4-5 times what the 'pay' is, NO food or drinks in the room, no computers, no phones, even no books once. One time in Santa Anna, CA, I sat through the selection process. One of the lawyers had finished asking me questions, just as time ran out for the day. Come back the next morning and was dismissed within two minutes of resuming the process.

Last year I received a form for "qualifying" for grand jury duty, in Portland! That's a 90 minute commute, each way, no parking, etc. Haven't heard a thing, so I guess I got lucky.

Jury duty here is a call in deal. If you are lucky you will be in the group number that does not have to show up. If you get picked you go down to the courthouse and hang out for the day. Very boring. But I enjoy the game.
If you should get called for a jury and selected out of the group of 50 or so they have a process called voir dire or something like that.
They ask you to go down a list of items like education, marriage status, your job, military experience, hobbies, etc.
I have found that if you give them a super long oratory on each item, being precise and succint, avoiding verbosity, you will usually be the first one dismissed by the defense attorney. They don't like folks that have the ability to reason or think for themselves.
AP

Most of the time, just telling them you're an engineer is cause for dismissal by the defense. Unfortunately, in the SA case (murder), the prosecution got the first round. The defense attorney dismissed me without asking a single question.

I get called about once a year for duty in the local circuit court over the past 5 years.

This year I got called twice for duty, once in January and once in July.

Bizarre, my wife never gets called.

EdWort said:

Just by the questions they ask, it's very obvious the the attorneys how ignorant and or stupid their "peers" are. It's scary.

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YES! I was selected for jury duty this Feb. I sat on a trial. I really had no expectations, but was astounded by how dim most of my "peers" actually are. Nobody could make a decision, nobody could read and understand the directions. They ended up making me the foreman even though I could not keep straight which was plaintiff/defendant. Court stuff never interested me.

Last time I got stuck with it (our company won't write you an excuse, they make you go), I looked around and thought, wow, these scumbags are not my peers at all.

I just wanted to point out that City and Superior Court jury duty is not that bad here because of the facilities and the staff. They really make it easy to do the right thing.

This is my 3rd time having to go downtown for it and it keeps getting better.

The one time I was emanpaneled, it was a short case.

My respect goes out to anyone that has sat on a longer trial with more gravity.

And it's nice to be in a situation where your employer supports jury duty. I can't imagine if they were antagonistic about it.

LOL Many years ago (ironically in Tucson) I was summoned for jury duty. At the time I was working 3 jobs and failing out of my only semester of college. (19 at the time) And I forgot all about it. I called them and they said no problem, they would just reschedule me.
I (somehow) forgot about this one too. Shortly thereafter, I joined the Navy and moved from AZ all together. That was almost 15 years ago. Ive always wondered if there wasn't a bench warrant out for my arrest back in AZ. LOL I would imagine that the statute of limitations would have run out on something silly like that. I also still have my old AZ license in a box from when I was 19. It was like a 30 or 40 year license. (I still think it hasnt 'expired') LOL even though I am now a resident of another state.
Good times
-Me

Last year I had to do federal jury duty for the southern district of Maryland. When you get summoned for federal jury duty you're on call for an entire month. I almost made it through the entire month, but then the last week I was seated on a jury for a federal weapons possession charge.

I felt bad for the guy. There was a bit of a rash of gun violence going on in Price Georges count at the time. This guy along with 4 other dudes couldn't be touch by the county since they technically didn't break any state laws. However, they passed the five cases off to the feds because there was some strange federal law about a gun passing into DC that they could be charged with. It was a pretty open and shut case since we're so close to the DC line and only last 2 days. Last I heard the guy got 6 1/2 years.

I get called for jury duty at least once a year even though they're only supposed to call you once a year at most! The only time I've actually served, we convicted our local high school principal of a DUI and hitting a car on the freeway and fleeing the scene! And no, she did not keep her job...